Horror of horrors. Recently, a pair of underpants fell from my line, splatting directly atop Nameless Wife's undergarments. I slid this note under their door (here's an English translation):
Good evening, José and family!The next morning, I opened my door to find my underpants in a shopping bag. A thick one, carefully chosen to steer clear of full snideness yet clearly alluding to the potentially noxious condition of said underpants, though they were, as I pledged, 100% copacetic. No note. The bag had been hung from my door knob. Silently. Neutrally. "Here's your underpants."
I hope you enjoyed my generous gift on your laundry line! I assure you, it’s perfectly clean!
I was planning to buy new underwear next week anyway, so it’s fine to throw it away if you don’t want it!
I hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather!
I imagined the up-to-the-elbows rubber cleaning gloves she'd used to deposit them into the thick-but-not-too-thick bag. And the many additional wash cycles she'd given not only her adjacent undergarments, but every last item hanging on her line.
Flash forward two days.
I leave my apartment and find yet another thick bag dangling from my doorknob. It contains a pillow case I hadn't even known had dropped. I went directly to the supermarket, bought a spool of shopping bags, and left them dangling from José's doorknob. The unspoken point, of course, was "Expect more drops!"
I imagined José's pinched grin, wryly amused by the gesture, while she-who-must-not-be-named ran through nasty scenarios. "Does he think we can't afford shopping bags?" "Is he giving us gifts in order to obligate us in some way?". If José won, there would be no response, and no returned bags, and the arc would be smooth. If Wife won, I'd find the bags back on my doorknob. And I get the vibe she normally prevails.
One thing was for sure: she'd find it unthinkable that her neighbor was expressing irony as a whimsical gesture to stoke joy. Because life ≠ joy. The notion of burning a single calorie for shits and giggles would be mind-boggling and paradigm-shaking. I had to be up to something malevolent or taunting or ugly and the bags would be sent back. Note-lessly. In an even thicker bag.
A player of long games, I plotted my next step: If the bags came back, I'd heighten the absurdity by buying a fishing pole, attaching an oversized gleaming metal hook, and lowering the line with underpants hanging from the hook right to her eye level.
The escalation proved unnecessary. The bags were not returned. My joke appears to have landed. I have bullied—with wit and consummate politeness—the encounter onto my terms, even in their building in their country, and even being the shmuck who keeps dropping underpants and whatnot into their midst like space debris.
But it just occurred to me that I'd never have left them a bunch of bags if this were Brooklyn or Chicago. I opted for it here because it's keyed in to Portuguese sense of humor. Among my puny superpowers is the ability to play to the humor sensibilities of different people and cultures (it's a framing thing), and I realize that's exactly what I did here, unconsciously. It was a joke custom-designed for Portugal.
